High School Baseball Still Counts

Anyone interested in playing college baseball needs to head over to College Baseball Profiles and read their latest College Coaches Survey. The focus is on New England colleges but it’s worth reading for some much needed insight in college baseball recruiting. Today I want to focus on one conclusion of the report-high school baseball still matters.

Your Coach’s Opinion Counts

According to the report, your high school coach is more important than your AAU Coach, American Legion Coach, or Private Coach. And this has been the case since they started doing the survey in 2012. The survey found that:

Many College Coaches understand that High School Coaches get to watch players develop over a few years in a team environment different then showcase or “individually driven” teams outside of High School. Ranking the High School Coach as the highest level of influence on evaluating the student-athlete increased 17% in 2016.

If you think about, this makes sense. The college coach is working with a team over a period of time and is part of an institution with an education mission. Unlike some other sports we won’t mention, baseball is just one way to supplement the education mission. Therefore, college coaches will be interested in what high school coaches have to say about you because they have been working with you under similar circumstances.

Your Grades Count

In fact, the survey found that a college coach was more likely to lose interest because of low grades than having a poor high school season. The average GPA players needed to have to be considered a prospect was at a 2.25. But before you start slacking off your academics, pay attention to what else the survey found.

The minimum GPA for D1 coaches is actually in a range of 2.25 to 2.75. And the survey found that the number of coaches that would accept a 2.75 actually decreased by 22% from the previous survey.

Furthermore, while coaches were more likely to lose interest over poor grades than a poor high school season, the high school season is still important. The survey found the high school season was more important than a poor performance at any one game the coach attended or a poor summer season. Summer ball hasn’t replaced high school baseball yet.

The most likely reason for a coach to lose interest? Poor attitude at a game the college coach was at. This means it’s ok to have a lousy game, just don’t drag down else everyone else on the team because of it. After all, the coach is looking for players for a team–attitude matters.

Ultimately, while high school baseball is still a necessary and significant part of college baseball recruiting, it isn’t the only component. I’ll talk about some of these other components in another post.

If you’re interested in playing college baseball in New England, you should definitely consider their college baseball profiles.